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It was 1984 and I was in trouble for jumping on my cousin Brandon’s bed. “You’ll break it!” I was admonished by my overprotective adoptive mother who walked in on us. But what my spoilsport mother missed was the song — “Born In the USA” by Bruce Springsteen — that was making me jump in the air. That was how rock music is supposed to make you feel. Free. Energetic. Like you could fly or take on the world. And so I jumped as high as I could as Springsteen sang the lyrics in a guttural roar, prompting me to pump my eight-year old fist.
Harkening back
The new film, based on the life of Springsteen, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” made me feel like I was eight years old again, and that Ronald Reagan was president, and that it was “morning in America” (at least for the white heterosexual middle class). With a setting in 1982 (I was in second grade that year), “Deliver Me From Nowhere” isn’t really a music biopic about Springsteen, but rather about the making of his most divisive album “Nebraska,” a folk album from a rock singer.
Based on a really great book by Warren Zanes, the film version has been called everything from “cringe” to “boring and clunky” by unimpressed film critics. But those reviews make me wonder, “have any of these critics ever listened to ‘Nebraska?’”
I discovered “Nebraska” while I was in college, which was a good time to discover the album. With a mind open to new ideas, it is a time for discovering new artists, writers and filmmakers, some of whom can remain a part of your life long after you wear your university tassel. So it was with me and “Nebraska.” By the time I’d hit my mid-twenties, I’d gone from escaping my small town of Kelso, Washington to the urban jungle of a pre-comeback Detroit. I had endured my first serious breakup, was homesick as hell, but was still under the financial thumb of my abusive father when it came to paying for my college tuition. I was a very angry young man and “Nebraska” was the perfect soundtrack during those growing pains.
Today, “Nebraska” remains my favorite Springsteen album. Stripped down in every way, especially emotionally, this is the album you reach for after a bad day at work, a fight with your spouse, or during those long, dark nights of the soul where it’s just you and your thoughts. “Nebraska” should be prescribed by shrinks, perhaps instead of anti-depressants.
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A national tour and Top 5 single, yet still seeking happiness
The film finds Springsteen at a dour, depressed time of his life when, seemingly, he should be most excited — he had just completed a successful national tour and had his first ever Top 5 single from his album “The River.” Suddenly the working-class kid from Jersey has money and fame and, yet, he’s still not happy, because it turns out—surprise!–none of that stuff really makes you happy in and of itself. So he turns inward and retreats to the bedroom of his rented house to write songs that tap into the dark side of the human condition. Songs like “Johnny 99,” a ballad about a laid off auto worker who goes berserk and holds up a store, killing a night clerk, and who is then sentenced to “98 years plus one.” Or “Mansion On the Hill,” a song about a defining moment in Springsteen’s childhood that’s filmed with great impact and tenderness in the movie.
The majority of the second half of the film is The Boss’s battle to get “Nebraska” released as he envisions it. No overdubs. No band input. Just the raw, crudely made cassette tape recorded in that makeshift, bedroom studio. This is a movie about the battle for artistic vision and integrity and, dammit, we need more movies about that.
This isn’t a music biopic in the truest sense of the term. If you liked “Rocketman” or “Bohemian Rhapsody,” you very well might be frustrated with this movie. And yes, Jeremy Allen White doesn’t look much like Springsteen. But he captures the torment and agony that Springsteen was going through during that fateful season back in the early ’80s that begat “Nebraska.”
I thought of my dad, who passed away four years ago, while watching “Deliver Me From Nowhere.” A particularly poignant father-son scene towards the end of the film made me wish my adoptive father— with whom I had a very complicated relationship —had lived long enough to see this movie. My dad, too politically conservative to ever be a Springsteen fan when he was alive, was scowling when I brought home the cassette tape of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” back in ’96, deriding Springsteen as “liberal trash.”
But “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is a movie that both sides of the political aisle can enjoy and maybe, just maybe, agree upon one thing: The road to artistic perfection is a long fraught journey that demands respect. And so does this movie.
Watch the trailer:
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is now playing at local theaters, with streaming scheduled to begin on Hulu and Disney+ at a later date.
